101 Tasks You Can Outsource to Virtual Staff to Grow Your Business!

One of the biggest misconceptions of working with virtual staff is that one employee can do everything for you. I call this the ‘Super VA Myth’, and I’ve busted it over and over again! It’s just not possible. Not in the real world, and not in the virtual world.

In order to effectively use virtual assistants to grow your business, you need to hire for the role, not the task. Something that I say all the time.

That means building a team. A team that will work together to achieve what you’re aiming for as a business owner.

It’s with this in mind that I decided to put together this list of tasks that you can outsource to virtual staff to grow your business more effectively. You’ll see that I’ve broken it down into the following roles:

General Virtual Assistant (GVA)

Audio / Video Editor

Content Writer

SEO / Web Marketer

Graphic / Web Designer

Web Developer

It’s important to acknowledge and appreciate that no one person can handle all of these different roles. It’s about using what you’ve got at your arsenal, to get what you want out of your team building and outsourcing.

So, let’s begin with a look at the one person that I feel every single entrepreneur on the face of the earth should have at their disposal – the General VA (GVA). This is that one person that you can lean on to help you, day to day, more so than any other employee.

They are true time savers – and therefore, as an entrepreneur, they’re your life savers, too! If you don’t have one on board in your business yet – get one now!

ROLE: GENERAL VIRTUAL ASSISTANT (GVA)

Email & Schedule Management Tasks

One of the biggest time-suckers in the land of entrepreneurship is email. Before I actively took it upon myself to remove myself from my business and become a Virtual CEO (listen to the full story in episode 16 of my podcast), I was trapped in Outlook for up to 7-hours a day. It was madness.

Working with a GVA to handle your email, as well as things like your calendar is essential to becoming more productive as a modern-age entrepreneur.

1. Filtering Emails / Managing Spam

2. Database Building / Updating Contacts or CRM

3. Answering Customer Service Emails /Tickets / Chat Support

4. Sending of Greetings eCards, Event Invitations, etc.

5. Calendar Management

6. Appointment Scheduling

7. Travel Arrangement and Planning

8. Reminder Services

File Storage & Organization Tasks

We live in a world of flashing lights, buttons and other things that distract us consistently throughout the course of our working day. Being organized is about as important as being productive. If not more. VA’s can help you systematize and put processes in place to help your business become more organized.

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Email Marketing

All this work is pointless if you’re not a) growing your email marketing list, and b) engaging with that list on a regular basis. It’s been said that for every name on your list, you should be making an average of $1 a month. So, working with a VA to help grow and market to your list is a complete no-brainer in my book! This takes the concept of choosing tasks to outsource to virtual staff to the next level – a level that equals money!

52. Creating a New List in Email Marketing Software

53. Adding and Removing Subscribers from Lists

54. Creating and Scheduling Broadcast Emails to Promote Content

55. Editing Follow-up Emails and Auto-responders

56. Creating Email Newsletters

57. Editing / Proofreading Emails

ROLE: AUDIO / VIDEO EDITOR

The use of virtual staff in audio and video production is still a little new – it’s only just started to emerge over the last few years. However, I can tell you (from personal experience) it’s created a ton of additional time for me. Not having to edit my own videos (even in a basic way!) has enabled me to spend more time developing my content, instead of worrying about the details. The same can be said for my podcasting.

Plus, the end result is just way sexier to look at (see below!).

58. Basic Editing of Audio Files

59. Removing Background Noise from Audio and Video

60. Adding Intro’s and Outro’s to Videos

61. Basic Photoshop / Image Editing (Not Graphic Design)

62. Powerpress (Podcasting WP Plugin) Installation

63. Podcast Setup on iTunes

64. Podcast Insertion on Blogpost

ROLE: CONTENT WRITER

Outsourcing your content is not something I suggest you do often. Especially if your brand is attached to it. However, if you’re doing a lot of online marketing, especially if you’re involved with niche site creation and promotion, or even bigger, more authoritative sites, it pays to save time on creating all that written content, by teaming up with a good selection of virtual writers.

65. Content / Blog Post Creation 66. Guest Blogging / Ghost Blogging

67. SEO Writing

68. Press Release Writing

69. Newsletter Writing

70. Copywriting (Don’t Suggest Sales Copy)

71. Directory Submission

72. Article Spinning

73. Article Marketing

ROLE: SEO / WEB MARKETER

The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) world has changed drastically over the last couple of years. What used to work doesn’t anymore. And what works today might not work so well tomorrow. However, create solid content and you’ll be off to the races immediately. But, what happens after you’ve marketed and promoted your new blog post, or podcast episode via social media? The storm calms down, right?

Having a solid SEO / Web Marketing VA in place will enable your content to be positioned and marketed in a way that will bring in consistent, long-term traffic.

74. Site Analysis

75. Keyword Research for Blog Content

76. Competitor Analysis

77. Landing Page Set-up/Creation

78. Web Master Submission

79. Sitemap Submissions

80. On-page optimization for a post / page (see below example)

81. Off-page optimization for a post / page

82. Social Bookmarking (Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg, Delicious)

83. Creating a Social Bookmarking Tracking Sheet

84. Blog Commenting – Off Page Optimization

85. Forum Participation / Moderation

86. Creating Backlinks / Link Buidling

87. Weekly / Monhtly Google Analytics & Traffic Reports

88. Monthly Keyword Ranking Reports

ROLE: GRAPHIC / WEB DESIGNER

Tinkering around in Photoshop is a massive waste of time for every entrepreneur that doesn’t know what he / she is doing. We do it though, right? We love the idea of letting our Superhero Syndrome take over and we believe that we can do everything – including graphic design.

Please – c’mon people… Pay those that truly DO know what they’re doing, to do it right the first time – not only will it look better, but you’ll be able to spend time on a marketing plan, or putting together your next info-product!

89. Designing Logos, Banners, Icons, eBook Covers and Headers

90. Designing Infographics Images (Content Provided)

91. Designing Websites, Creating Mock-Ups

92. Designing Landing / Sales / Opt-In Pages

93. Basic Video Editing (Splicing Intros & Outros with Raw Footage)

ROLE: WEB DEVELOPER

When I launched my first blog in 2009 it was a mess. And here’s the kicker – I had purchased a perfectly good looking premium theme, and then spent the best part of 3-days ‘customizing’ it (and I use that term as loosely as possible, trust me!). The result was what you could probably imagine from someone with no coding experience – a catastrophe!

While you’re putting together content plans and a publishing schedule for your site, get a super-skilled Web Developer VA to handle the coding and customizing side of things for you. It’s just plain smart!

94. Support and Develop WordPress (PHP) Websites

95. Install WordPress PlugIns and Themes

96. WordPress Theme Customization

97. WordPress Functionality and PlugIn Enhancement

98. Site Maintenance / Security and Troubleshooting

99. CRM Integration & Social Media Integration

100. Payment Gateway Integration

101. Install and Support an Email Ticketing System (eg. ZenDesk)

Conclusion

As you can see, the list of tasks that virtual workers can handle for you is about as diverse as the roles that are available at our disposal as business owners.

The fact is that working with VA’s has gone far further than most people ever thought possible. It’s more than just filtering email and managing your social media (although thats covered, too!). It’s about business growth. It’s about waking up and understanding that, as business owners, we shouldn’t be doing half the stuff that we are doing on a day to day basis!

I hope this list serves as a bit of a spring board for some of you yet to take the VA plunge, and perhaps a ‘go to’ source of additional potential, for those of you that are already utilizing the power of virtual staff in your business.

Was this list helpful? Would you like to see more posts like this? Got some tasks not listed here you’d like to share? Please comment below!

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